A Brand New Thing, starting today

There is something called Alice In Wonderland Syndrome, which “causes one’s surroundings to appear distorted. Just as Alice grows too tall for the house, those suffering from Alice in Wonderland Syndrome will hear sounds either quieter or louder than they actually are, see objects larger or smaller than reality, and even lose sense of accurate velocity or textures. This terrifying disorder, which has been described as an LSD trip without the euphoria, even perverts one’s own body image.” This sounds horrible, but it’s interesting to note that Alice In Wonderland Syndrome is also called Todd Syndrome. I wonder why? (My brother-in-law’s name is Todd.) Who is this Todd? Was he or she the psychologist that diagnosed it or the first one unlucky enough to be afflicted? Sheesh, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the internet and lose several hours or days or years. I was simply searching for information on seasonal affective disorder (SAD) when I happened upon my brother-in-law’s syndrome.

I’m pretty sure I suffer from this seasonal depression, and the reason I tell you this is because it probably explains my irregular posts, breaking the most important rule of ‘effective blogging.’

But as these things so often do, everything in the entire universe is speaking the same language – maybe it always is, but I so rarely listen, and when I do, my mind is blown by the connectedness of the messages being received. You know what I mean, right? The song on the radio, plot of your favorite show, the conversation you overhear between 2 people you don’t know in the grocery store, the Bible passage you randomly picked, all pointing you in a shockingly specific direction.

So, we’re going to break the usual format and start a sort of online series, called Every Detail.

Leviticus (everyone’s favorite book of the Bible) details a time in the history of Israel where the people, who have been slaves in Egypt, have now been set free. They now have a land and a fresh start, an opportunity to re-order the world from scratch. How will they do it? What will be important? How are they going to live in this new creation?

It talks about sacrifices, forgiveness, food, skin, mold, discharges – it’s a weird book nobody reads anymore that is so boring your face gets numb in just a few paragraphs. But the foundation it builds upon is a total integration of every dimension of life, that the details matter, and how you do anything is how you do everything.

We’ve been sold an idea of compartmentalization, where there are different parts of us that don’t bleed into the others. George Costanza, on Seinfeld, spoke of the conflict between “Relationship George” and “Independent George.” We may not have relationship and independent selves, but we might have work, friend, student, church, parent personas, like avatars in separate video-game worlds. The fallacy goes that these faces are natural and necessary, a kind of modern survival strategy.

“If Relationship George walks through that door, he will KILL Independent George!!!”

The Bible argues that this murder is absolutely necessary. But instead, maybe Independent George should kill Relationship George, or church Chad should kill work Chad, or whoever. The idea is that we should not be dis-integrated in any way, and who we are should be who we are in all spaces, regardless of who is there or what time of day or night it is, and the images we’ve created, with their masks and affectations, for different audiences, have to go.

We have been created, purposefully, wonderfully, for a certain beautiful reason – and every detail of our lives should reflect this. This is what this space will address, in many different ways: how we re-order our worlds and what that means for every part of us, from our desks to our closets to our food to our toothpaste to our daily routine.

Last night, in a discussion on our increasingly fractured and hurting world, one of us asked, “How do we change it?”